LFD/LFR players quality is declining, not only tanks. I just passed another alt 90 yesterday with a few friends, and trough the whole leveling we played with amazingly bad players in randoms.

I know that there always was some bad casual players who touched the game very lightly. But in since MoP it is really geting worst. From level 1 to level 90, 80% of hunters encountered had pet taunt active (not joking, we counted after nearly every hunter, and some locks, chain taunted mobs). Being at really low level, I every time asked to turn off the taunt, explaining how to do it when I had no response. Nearly everytime the hunters never cared (and were kicked). This is an emblematic exemple, but nearly every dps encountered were really really poorly played.

The fews times I wasn't tanking the tanks never could keep agro on a pack (prot paladin playing single button judgment, DK spaming ice touch, some madness were seen). Healer usually only used their instant cast (hi random rsham who let people die between two riptide... And of course not knowing earth shield @lv 80+)

And the problem is also there in heroics/LFR. With my new feral and 437ilvl I do ~40-42k dps, just near me is a ret fully T15 502 geared doing 28k... How is that even possible ? And that's just the most recent exemple. I have a blood DK, a ret paladin, an enh and a BrM I play regulary and level of play is abyssmal recently.

I really can't understand how MoP increased so much the gap between bad, decent and good players...

Well, when dps in LFD for pretty much ever level except max level do everything in their power to prevent tanks from learning how to do their job, demanding that either the tank be an old pro who can chain pull with ease or just get out of the way, what do you really expect? Tanks have to learn somewhere, and if they can't learn while leveling through the lower dungeons they'll learn at the higher levels.

LFD/LFR players quality is declining, not only tanks. I just passed another alt 90 yesterday with a few friends, and trough the whole leveling we played with amazingly bad players in randoms.

I know that there always was some bad casual players who touched the game very lightly. But in since MoP it is really geting worst. From level 1 to level 90, 80% of hunters encountered had pet taunt active (not joking, we counted after nearly every hunter, and some locks, chain taunted mobs). Being at really low level, I every time asked to turn off the taunt, explaining how to do it when I had no response. Nearly everytime the hunters never cared (and were kicked). This is an emblematic exemple, but nearly every dps encountered were really really poorly played.

The fews times I wasn't tanking the tanks never could keep agro on a pack (prot paladin playing single button judgment, DK spaming ice touch, some madness were seen). Healer usually only used their instant cast (hi random rsham who let people die between two riptide... And of course not knowing earth shield @lv 80+)

And the problem is also there in heroics/LFR. With my new feral and 437ilvl I do ~40-42k dps, just near me is a ret fully T15 502 geared doing 28k... How is that even possible ? And that's just the most recent exemple. I have a blood DK, a ret paladin, an enh and a BrM I play regulary and level of play is abyssmal recently.

I really can't understand how MoP increased so much the gap between bad, decent and good players...

No, it's always been like this in every expansion.

As I said above, if you are now just noticing this, means you were one of the baddies in previous expansions.

I have been leveling alts lately in the MoP level range and one thing is apparent to me. The quality of tanks is declining. Ive had 1 Dk tank who actually knew what death strike was, and used it. Ive had prot paladins not using shield of righteousness, ever. Warrior tanks not once using shield block and druid tanks who cant even hold aoe threat. Over all, the quality of the tanks as of late seems to be declining. It worries me since my guild recently had a tank leave because of a job and now we gotta get a new one. Im already picky as is with my OT, but lately, idk. Last tank we tried couldn't even manage a simple taunt the boss off the healers. Have others been experiencing this as well?

Not really strange when there is no reason to play any better. And when you do try to play better the game (heroic 5 mans/LFR) only becomes boring.
Being able to afk or auto attack through dungeons also causes players to not explain things to new players because they simply don't need to.
And on top of that the queueing system makes doing instances less personal/social and players start to care even less. And because players don't really feel attached to the other players in LFD/LFR they start playing like morons and make it even more difficult for others.

This all adds up to having more bad performing players. Frustrating but at least you get to do the content. The best thing to do is trying to ignore others as much as possible unless you are a holy saint who still believes helping others is going to change anything. Good luck then with constantly helping random people you will never see again just to get grouped up with more noobs who might not even want your help.

1. The tanks you're getting are alts that have very likely been unplayed since Cata. Of course they're not going to be as good as people who've mained tanks the entire time.

2. Tanking for strangers is crappy and not fun so most tanks avoid it. Tanks do a lot of the work and doing it for a bunch of whiny strangers who you can never please sucks. The 'tanks' you're getting are people who just don't care or are people just looking for a fast queue. The sudden absence of tanks at level cap since we've been able to choose what spec we get our loot for makes it clear this is an issue.

Not as bad as the DPS. Most people can't even do average damage these days, mostly because they don't care. I often experience people saying "do I rly hav to dps i cba" when I sign up as healer. It's no wonder people don't tank for randoms. I only heal randoms if my buddy tank for me and even then it's horrible.

You're not punished for being bad, afk or just not caring. The "vote kick" system is actually in favor of lazy people. Nobody sane is going to wait 15 mins or force a wipe in order to kick some douchebag, since dungeons take less than 15 mins.

The experience for new tanks with strangers, particularly trigger-happy dps can be absolutely awful.
Because dps can survive a facepull, they think it is their right to do so.
Rushing an instance might benefit them in terms of xp gain, but it does nothing for the tank since they do not get the opportunity to learn how to play.
Stupid, impatient players who the tank gets landed with are why there is a shortage of good tanks, ironic when they will complain most about it yet proceed to cause it.

I'm working on leveling my tank, and you just can't imagine the amount of DPSers who always pull on purpose. I really don't know how to deal with these people, and I don't want to vote kick, either. I always ask them to disable their pet taunts or not to pull ahead of me, but these people don't even say hi when entering a group, so they won't even notice I typed something on chat, so I leave the group, instead. I would actually admit that I'm slow at pulling, but the thing is... I'm really not.

Once in Gun'Drak, there was a healer who kept telling me to do big pulls, even before we started clearing. I always tend to do that anyways, so I said nothing. It went fine until the first stair on the right side. Once you pass the stair, there are quite a bunch of Undead mobs in that room, just before the first boss. He told me to pull all the Undead in that room and I told him it would be hard to heal. Said he'll 'easily' heal it through, and so I started pulling all of them. Despite using the CDs I have, I died within a few seconds. I got kicked from the group..

I wouldn't say the quality of tanks is declining, but good lord, there are really some issues with some people on low level 5 man instances..

"Those mortal shells that we call bodies, are not ours to keep. The body is a gift of earth that must, one day, be returned from whence it came"

The experience for new tanks with strangers, particularly trigger-happy dps can be absolutely awful.
Because dps can survive a facepull, they think it is their right to do so.
Rushing an instance might benefit them in terms of xp gain, but it does nothing for the tank since they do not get the opportunity to learn how to play.
Stupid, impatient players who the tank gets landed with are why there is a shortage of good tanks, ironic when they will complain most about it yet proceed to cause it.

+1^^

There is no way for a new player (or someone who never played a tank) to learn anything about tanking (or healing, or dpsing) in low level dungeons nowaday. Except that people yell at you for almost everything. No wonder, that those "new" tanks/players don't have any clue about what they are doing when they finally get near max level. Some of them simply stopped caring by then.

Most people are just too impatient. Everytime you start to yell at the "lazy" tank (or dps, or heal) instead of trying to explain what he should or should not be doing, you increase the problem further. Sure there are those people who just don't want to listen , like to troll you or got an ego the size of a whale (not only tanks;>). But most people do appreciate tipps if they don't come out like "noob, pull faster"

I totally do understand that sometimes you just want to get over with the dungeon as fast as possible. I'm often impatient myself(and I did my fair share of annoying my tanks/heals/dps), but seriously... there are really few moments where those extra 5minutes would actually matter^^
Go about it as "one good deed a day" ...you may not benefit from it immediatly, but in a long run it would benefit all

Didn't understand a word? That's fine, I don't know what I'm saying either

The quality of actual tanks is not declining. The number of DPS queueing as a tank for a quick queue is increasing, but that doesn't make them tanks.

as a healer, youre not bloody kidding. more often than not if i do a RHC, it will be a wannabe tank in dps gear or worse, full pvp gear.
i leave groups if its the latter, it really is my pet hate seeing tanks in full pvp gear.

Of course the overall quality of tanks is declining. Tanking used to require quite a high amount of awareness, skill and effort. Stance Dancing, tab targetting, threat creation mattered, and the likes. Now it was all streamlined and made easy in such a way that tanks don't improve as players... they just go along with their massive dps and aoe tanking. It's actually disappointing and the reason i stopped tanking after many years.

People can say what they want, but when the game gets easier, players won't improve as much, so yes, the overall quality of players (mostly tanks) is declining in comparison to a couple of years back.

Warriors for instance, Thunder clap was only available in Battle Stance, threat generation was a lot lower, taunt was a melee ranged ability, there were no multi target\aoe abilities in defensive stance (revenge's cleave was added later, and tclap was battle as already mentioned), breaking fear was only available in Zerker stance (so you had to stance dance), all while maintaining threat on multiple targets with a frantic 'rotation'. Tanking now is just sad.

Of course the 'quality' of tanks has dropped. The game shifted from stack stamina and hold aggro > to active mitigation, ie. you're in control of your survival yourself (to a certain extent). Lots of players either a) don't care, b) don't know any better and/or c) refuse to adapt to this change.